By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK Federal prosecutors in New York on Wednesday asked a judge to order Sam Bankman-Fried to be jailed ahead of his scheduled October trial over the collapse of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
At a hearing in Manhattan federal court, prosecutor Danielle Sassoon said Bankman-Fried "crossed a line" by communicating regularly with journalists and trying to intimidate a key witness against him.
The request came after Bankman-Fried gave a New York Times reporter personal writings by Caroline Ellison, who led his crypto hedge fund Alameda Research, in what prosecutors said amounted to witness tampering.
Ellison, also Bankman-Fried's onetime romantic partner, has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify against him.
"This latest incident is an escalation of an ongoing campaign with the press that has now crossed a line," prosecutor Danielle Sassoon said. "No set of release conditions can ensure the safety of the community."
The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, where Sassoon works, had previously asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to bar Bankman-Fried from making public statements that could interfere with the case.
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to charges he stole billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at Alameda, consented to the gag order but asked that it also apply to prosecutors and potential witnesses, namely current FTC Chief Executive Officer John Ray.
The purpose of Wednesday's hearing was in part to consider what Kaplan called "the adequacy and continuation of the current bail conditions."
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
